Dead Watch (46 page)

Jake and Madison hid out in New York for two weeks, talking only to Danzig and Novatny. Then Jake called Arlo Goodman from a pay phone, and flew out to Richmond on a Wednesday afternoon. Goodman walked out of the governor’s mansion at six o’clock, the sun sliding down in the sky, told his bodyguard to take a break, and met Jake at the corner.

They walked along for twenty yards without speaking, looking at the day: a good day in Richmond, summer heat coming on, but not there yet; flowers in the gardens next to the sidewalk. Two men walking, one with a limp and a cane, the other with a bad hand half curled in front of him.

Goodman opened. “That was a cold thing with Darrell.”

“I didn’t invite him out there.”

Goodman grunted. “Don’t bullshit me, Jake. You had him on a string and you pulled.”

Jake said, “I wouldn’t have done it, if it weren’t for Wisconsin.”

Goodman looked at him. “Wisconsin? You don’t think . . .”

“I do think. I can prove it,” Jake said. “And I think I can prove you knew about it. Enough to thoroughly fuck you. Maybe, with the right jury, get you sent away for first-degree murder.”

Goodman thought it over. Then, “Gimme a hint.”

“Did they do an autopsy on Darrell?”

“Of course.”

“Then they would have found some scratches on his arms, already partly healed. Wouldn’t have been a big deal, given the rest of the damage. The thing was, the scratches were put there by the secretary out in Madison. The FBI took skin and blood off her fingernails. They don’t know who it belongs to; don’t know where to look.”

“Darrell was cremated,” Goodman said.

“Yeah, but you weren’t,” Jake said. “You share most of Darrell’s gene load. If they did a test on you, they’d know that the skin didn’t belong to you, but that it did belong to your brother. And I’ve rounded up a few pieces of paper. Cell-phone calls, state airplane records . . . they don’t make it a sure thing, but they would cause you some trouble.”

“The dumb shit,” Goodman said. They walked along. “You can believe me or not, but I didn’t want those people in Madison to get hurt. Wasn’t any point in it. We wanted the package, but if we didn’t get it, knowing that you had it was almost as good.”

Jake nodded. “You could have pushed it out there, the way you did on Howard Barber and Lincoln Bowe.”

Goodman smiled, not a happy smile, but resignation. “Yup. But that fuckin’ Darrell . . .” He sighed. “If you mess with me, Jake, they’ll probably find the Madison Bowe surveillance tapes in Darrell’s safe-deposit box. They’d pretty much establish that she knew about the Landers package, and that she’s been lying about it.”

“We know about the tapes, of course,” Jake said. “We’d hate to see them get out. Also, Madison has some . . . ethical . . . concerns about the investigation into Darrell’s death. We’d hate to see some poor broken-ass Mexican hauled up on murder charges, just so you can clear it.”

“Won’t happen. I got my dumbest guys running that investigation.” A few more steps. “So we’re dealing?”

“Mmm. We think everything is fine as it is now. We’ve got a good vice-presidential nominee, you’re the respected governor of the great Commonwealth of Virginia, Madison is recovering nicely from her husband’s death. Why stir the pot?”

“That was exactly my thought,” Goodman said. “There’s no reason at all—no reason to stir up anything.”

“What’re you going to do next year?” Jake asked. “When you leave office?”

“I don’t know. Go fishing. Go on television. But I’m a pretty damn good public executive, Jake. I like the work and people like me. Would’ve been a good vice president . . .” He sighed. “Well. I’ll find something. Maybe the president will have something for me. A year from now, all this noise will be ancient history.”

They didn’t shake hands; Arlo just peeled off as they walked back toward the mansion, said, “If you ever need anything, I’d hesitate to ask me for it.”

“I will,” Jake said. “Hesitate.” And on the way back to his car, thought about Goodman hoping for a job offer from the president.
Over my dead body . . .

Danzig said to Jake, about the national convention, “There’s a big goddamn hang-up on the electrical work. We’ve got three different unions and two city councilmen going at it tooth and nail, and we need somebody to go talk some serious shit with them. Figure out who to talk to, how to get it done. The media’s already screaming about their booths, they can’t plan their setups until they can configure their booths . . .”

“I’ve been spending some time in New York,” Jake said. “I’ve got a couple of guys I can call there. Probably a matter of money more than anything.”

As Jake stood up to leave, Danzig asked, “You figure out what you want?”

“I want peace and quiet,” Jake said. “However I can get it. However Madison and I can get it.”

“I believe that can be had,” Danzig said. “I have a relationship with the special prosecutor, although you don’t know that. What else?”

“That’s a lot. But there’s this girl who used to work for Arlo Goodman, as an intern. She’d like to move up to the White House. She’s smart, she’ll take anything. No big deal, though.”

“Tits and ass?”

“Excellent.”

“Give me her name—we’ll find something,” Danzig said.

“Thanks. I’ll get going on New York. What’s the timeline there?”

“Gotta be done by yesterday,” Danzig said. As Jake got to the door, he asked, “Is this gonna be a full-time thing? You and Madison Bowe?”

“We’re pretty tight. I don’t know—it could work out.” Jake hesitated, then asked, “Is Goodman gonna get behind us for the election? I know he wanted the vice presidency.”

“The president’s talking to him next week,” Danzig said. “We’re worried about what happened down in Norfolk, with his brother. Unregistered machine guns, camouflage suits, it looked like an assassination went bad. Now all this stuff is coming out about interrogation techniques, and the Watchmen. I don’t know . . .”

“I’ve been talking to people,” Jake said, and thought,
Just take a second to fuck Goodman for good.
“There’s a lot of stuff that’s going to surface when Goodman’s out of office, when he’s out of power down there. There are literally going to be bodies coming up. Death-squad stuff. I thought you guys should know about it. I leave the decision up to you; this is the only place I talk about it.”

One of Carl V. Schmidt’s neighbors called an FBI man who’d left him a card. “Agent Lane? This is Jimmy Jones down by Carl Schmidt’s house, you asked me to call you if I saw anything going on down there? Yeah? Well, Carl just got back. What? Yeah. He’s standing right here. He’s a little pissed . . .”

Carl V. Schmidt took the phone: “Hey. What’ve you guys been doing in my house? The place is wrecked. What the hell is going on here?”

After an active phone call, Schmidt agreed to wait at his house for an FBI man to get there for an interview. When Schmidt hung up, the neighbor asked, “Where’n the hell you been, Carl? Where’d you get that tan?”

The president said to Arlo Goodman, in the Oval Office, “How the heck have you been, Arlo? Man, has this been a month, or what?”

“This has been a month and a half, Mr. President,” Goodman said, as they sat down. Goodman crossed his legs. “The Lincoln Bowe thing . . . who would have thought?”

“The man was crazy,” the president said. “Maybe the medication . . . or maybe he was just nuts.”

“That’s my theory,” Goodman said.

The president allowed the slightest frown to glide across his face: “I was shocked to hear about your brother. How’s that investigation going?”

Goodman shook his head. “It’s going nowhere. Darrell was off on his own. I may have screwed up, letting him run too free, but he solved a lot of problems down there. Now . . . might be time to tighten the reins on the Watchmen.”

The president nodded. “They seem a little too . . . what? Executive? A little too military?”

“It bothers me,” Goodman confessed. “I think there are still uses for the organization, but more as a goodwill brotherhood. Remove any idea that there might be police functions.”

“Excellent,” the president said, rapping the top of his desk with his knuckles. “Listen, I’m almost embarrassed to ask, but how heavily can we lean on you for the campaign? You must be tired, you have your own problems. I suspect you might have liked the vice presidency . . .”

“You did exactly the right thing, there, Mr. President.” Goodman was embarrassed; he could feel himself brownnosing. “She absolutely guarantees that you’ll carry Texas—and she’ll be a good vice president, to boot. As for me, I’ll do whatever you want. Work as hard as you want me to, or go as easy. Actually, I think this campaign is gonna be fun. We’re gonna kick ass and take names.”

The president said, “We’re counting on you, Arlo. And it could be tough. Now let me ask you one other thing . . .” He glanced at his watch. “What do you think of Ham Peterson?”

Ham Peterson was the former governor of Nevada and head of Homeland Security. The calculator in Goodman’s head began to churn. “He’s a good guy, but he’s had some problems . . .”

“He steps on his own dick every time he turns around,” the president said. “I’ll tell you, Arlo, we won’t fire anybody right after the election. Leaves a bad taste. But Ham should retire back to the ski slopes. Why don’t you bone up on Homeland Security? I’ll have Bill Danzig send you some materials . . .”

A half hour later, the president was talking to Danzig, and said, “Send that Homeland stuff over to Arlo.”

“He bit?”

“Like a ten-pound bass,” the president said. “He’ll bust his ass during the election, finish out his term, and then . . . he’ll just go away.”

“He’s not going to like that,” Danzig said.

“We have an old farm saying in Indiana that covers the situation,” the president said. “Fuck him.”